If you’re a die-hard Bitcoin fan, then you probably know what May 22 signifies in the crypto world’s calendar. For those who don’t. it’s not the birthday of Satoshi Nakamoto or the day Bitcoin’s white paper was published. Far from it.
May 22 is “Bitcoin Pizza Day.” It was the day that a Bitcoin investor purchased pizza with the use of the currency for the very first time. Time sure has passed since then, and a lot of things have happened.
However, the man behind this milestone is set to tell his story. On Thursday, it was confirmed via a tweet that Laszlo Hanyecz, the man whose decision created Bitcoin Pizza Day, would be featured on 60 Minutes with Anderson Cooper. The interview will air on CBS on Sunday, May 19, 2019, by 7pm.
One now-very-shocking purchase
So, if you’ve not heard the story of Laszlo Hanyecz, don’t be dismayed. While it is a story about a mistake of incredible proportions, it should at least help you get your mind off the fact that Bitcoin has slipped back under the $8,000 mark. Hanyecz’s story is as dreadful as it is short. In the early days of Bitcoin, back when the asset was valued at less than one cent, he went on to purchase pizza with it.
Seems normal, doesn’t it? Well, here’s the kicker; to make his purchase, he had to spend 10,000 BTC tokens. Yes, it was 2010. At the time, the value of a single BTC token when the purchase was made was about 0.0041, which means that he ended up spending about $41 on his purchase. Also, given that this purchase was the first ever instance when Bitcoin as used to purchase pizza, it was celebrated as kind of a big deal.
If only Hanyecz knew the gravity of what he had done then. Well, now, he does. Bitcoin is trading for $7,285 a token at press time (per data from CoinMarketCap), which means that the value of the tokens he exchanged for pizza in 2010 would have been worth a staggering $72 million, at press time.
Now, do you feel better?
Read: Should you Invest in Bitcoin?
We’ve been here before
The truth is that this interview won’t influence the market in any way. Still, it’s a curious thing to get into the mind of the man who could have had a smashing fortune, but chose to spend it all on pizza. It’s almost reminiscent of the story of Ronald Wayne, the third co-founder of tech behemoth Apple Inc. Wayne founded Apple with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, providing “mature supervision,” as well as documentation and mechanical engineering services for 10 percent of the company. He was instrumental in creating the first official Apple agreement and company logo, in 1976.
However, while Jobs and Wozniak had next to nothing, Wayne was the only partner with assets, and he worried that any debts incurred by the company would end up falling on him if the company went bankrupt. So, after less than 2 weeks working at Apple, he had his name removed and sold his stake his partners for $800. That stake would have been worth $80 billion.
Wayne did later claim in an interview with Business Insider that he didn’t regret selling his stake, as staying with Apple would have confined him to a life of “shuffling papers for the next 20 years.” Just another way of saving face. I don’t think he would mind shuffling those papers now if it means getting his stake back.
